The Nature of Trance / Hypnosis

I have been asked on many occassions from curious and often skeptical people regarding the nature of hypnosis. There are so many myths, rumours and stigmas around hypnosis it's a wonder I get any clients at all. I'd like to address a few of them here and hopefully demystify, enlighten and educate about the true nature of hypnosis / trance and the mind and how it works. Fans of stage hypnosis turn away now! =)

Our minds work in such a way that our thoughts affect our feelings which
directly affects our behaviour. Sometimes when we consciously want to change
something and we may not know why we can't --- but every attempt fails.

Our minds are structured in a way that we have a conscious mind (what we are
aware of and how we interact with the world through our senses) and our
unconscious mind (our learned behaviours, memories and automatic functions
such as breathing, digestion et al).

This structure attributes to our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. For
example, using anxiety as an example -- a client suffers from anxiety ---
they get anxious whenever they think about speaking in public, this triggers
thoughts of failure (whatever that means to them) or they have fears of what
other people will think of them... They imagine themselves in this situation
happening the way they don't want it to, it creates a feeling inside of
panic (whatever that means to them, such as tight chest, racing heart,
confusion) which leads to them behaving in such a way so they can avoid this
happening (fleeing, avoiding, not speaking)...

This is the way they "do anxiety" --- does that make sense?

Because there's a context and structure to the way people do things ---
there's a strategy --- which you can examine and find out how they'd like to
be instead and work them toward that. The driver behind all of this is
'fight or flight' response --- or moving away from pain and toward pleasure.
We're hard-wired for this.

Why this happens is because somewhere in the past, something would have made
the client feel 'unsafe' --- the anxiety strategy is a learned behaviour to
avoid feeling / being 'unsafe'. Think about it... babies don't suffer from
anxiety --- do they? We are born perfect and we 'learn' how to do things ---
even unresourceful things.

As far as 'side effects'... hypnosis is perfectly safe. It's accepted
amongst neuroscientists (those who study the brain) that all hypnosis is
'self hypnosis'. Which basically means that hypnosis or 'trance' is a
natural state which we do all the time... it's even widely accepted that our
'problem state' (how you do your problem) is a trance state itself.

An example of this is when you are driving down the road and you don't
recall the last five miles or so, because you were 'miles away'. Trance is
just a focused state of concentration, that you do naturally... The
hypnotherapists is not inducing you into trance, they are guiding you...
During trance you are in complete control --- you cannot be made to do
anything that is against your values or beliefs --- it would be rejected by
your unconscious mind.

So if any adverse effects happened following a hypnotherapy session, it's
likely that it was rejected by the unconscious mind --- as it made the
person feel unsafe. This would come down to the therapists training and the
relationship between the therapist and the client.

It is understood that this relationship or collaboration is one of the
single most important factors of successful therapy --- so if you do not
trust your therapists, it's not worth pursuing. Find another and ask
questions --- a good therapist with sufficient training will be able to
answer them.

As far as how 'stage hypnotists' get their participants to bark like a dog and such, well think about it... they bought the ticket to the show, they got up on stage as a volunteer... do you really think that this goes against their values or beliefs? It's fair to say that they *wanted* to!

I hope this enlightens and educates. If you have any further questions,
please feel free to email or ring me on 0794 880 1229.